Abstract:

One of the more important aims in sciences grades is to form professionals highly qualified in knowledge and abilities and capables to formulate and solve problems. As a matter of globalization, our societies’ progress is increasingly based on knowledge, skills and ability to learn, consequently Higher Education in universities plays a key role. This phenomenon has led to the adoption of new ways of implementing university studies systems into the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) context. Consistently, appropriate modules should be designed where students develop important professional competences.
It is note worthy the fact of students’ acceptance of this university transformation. Actually, it has been recently published in the media student demonstrations against the adoption of the “Boulogne Methodology”. According to this argument, we proposed the evaluation of students’ satisfaction level after the application of a Guided Study and two Problem-Based Learning activities implemented on the course in order to develop one of the most important generic competencies on sciences grades, such as “Problem Solving”.
These studies has been conducted on a level 1 mandatory chemistry module, named General Chemistry, included on the Environmental Sciences degree. After theoretical concepts and competency development assessment, a forty-items course ratings document was employed as an end-of-course satisfaction rating form, which contains items related to groups, problems, and peer tutors, as for example:

1. I am comfortable working in groups.
2. I can apply the fundamental concepts I learned to unfamiliar problems.
3. I feel comfortable sharing information with others.
4. My ability to find, read and analyze information has improved.
5. Evaluating the individual efforts of myself and my group members helped our group function well.
6. I benefit from the whole class wrap-up sessions after each problem.
7. My peer tutor helps me to develop the best action steps for addressing the problem by posing questions, and challenging and critiquing information presented.
8. The instructor guides and intervenes when necessary to keep group on track.
9. My tutor encourages the use of a variety of resources.
10. Student concerns and problems were satisfied by the tutor.

Students were asked to rank their response to the questions using a discrete visual scale of 6 (strongly agree) to 1 (strongly disagree). Surprisingly, module questionnaire revealed a significant progress in student appreciation and satisfaction with academic content, new methodologies employed and performance feedback on adopting this new methodology approach to the chemistry subject.

Keywords:

bologna process, student-centred education, student satisfaction.